Are there freeware disc cloning programs that copy everything accurately?

Sossity 2008-10-12 17:05:11 UTC #1

I am trying to move or copy my old external hard drive contents to my new seagate external hard drive, I tried using a program called syncback, but it did not copy everything, it left individual photos & movie files out, so I was faced with going through my entire old & new hard drives side by side in windows explore to copy myself using windows explore what syncback left out, this would have been way too tedious. Is there any freeware programs that can do this reliably? copy everything? I dont want to have to go back & check myself in windows explore, it will take me way too long, if I do this, I mind as well copy everything myself by hand in windows explore.

do all clone or copy programs leave things out? or are there ones that can copy everything?

Sossity

libiec 2008-10-12 17:26:15 UTC #2

Since you have a Seagate drive you might want to use DiscWizard. It’s available from the seagate site.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=downloads&vgnextoid=51e092db8a13d010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

I’ve used it when I upgraded to a new internal hard drive and it clone my old drive contents perfectly to the new drive.

DrageMester 2008-10-13 01:01:05 UTC #3

If you want to copy files (as opposed to copying the whole partition), there’s a nice Windows Explorer extension called TeraCopy which can be used for e.g. drag-and-drop copying, and allows you to skip anything that has already been copied or only copy newer files.

Sossity 2008-10-13 01:10:58 UTC #4

[QUOTE=DrageMester;2140418]If you want to copy files (as opposed to copying the whole partition), there’s a nice Windows Explorer extension called TeraCopy which can be used for e.g. drag-and-drop copying, and allows you to skip anything that has already been copied or only copy newer files.[/QUOTE]

I just ran XXclone to copy my old external hard drive contents to my new seagate drive, at someones suggestion, & it says it completed the copy successfully.

XX clone saved a log
on my new hard drive;

946,124 2008-10-12 15:40:50 A del-u H:\System Volume Information_restore{B37680B2-BA0A-4E5D-BF30-83E44C588624}\RP55\change.log ### Delete Failed (errnum:32) ###
0 2008-10-12 15:52:12 A del-u H:\XXCLONE.LOG ### Delete Failed (errnum:32) ###

XXCLONE Freeware ver 0.58.0
Invocation Time: 2008-10-12 15:42:59
Command Line in action: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\xxclone.exe X:IOMEGA_HDD( H: /backup1 /log:8 /sys0 /ni:6

===============================================================================
Statistics # Directories # Files (%) Total Bytes (%)

Located in Src 1,450 11,633 (100.0) 142,607,204,821 (100.0)
Backup skipped 1 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0)
Backup success 1,449 11,633 (100.0) 142,607,204,821 (100.0)
Backup failed 0 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0)
Deleted fm Target 0 509 162,954,104
Delete failed 0 2 946,124

Action began: 2008-10-12 15:52:10
Action ended: 2008-10-12 20:36:43
Elapsed time: 17,073 sec ( 4h 44m 33s)
Idle dir iteration: 249
Idle during copy: 287,103
Idle after cpy/del: 13,591
Idle Control (/ni): 6 (1/40, 1/6, 1)

the source drive was iomega X NTFS & the target drive was local disc H fat 32 sata; from this log can you tell for sure if it copied my drive completely? I am not quite sure how to read/interpret this log.

thanks for the help, & I will look at Tera copy

Sossity

bean55 2008-10-13 06:27:09 UTC #5

I have used Seagate’s DiscWizard and have had no problems getting everything copied over to the new drive.

As far as the log what I read says it missed 1 file :

Located in Src 1,450 11,633 (100.0) 142,607,204,821 (100.0)

[U]Backup skipped 1 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0)[/U]

Backup success 1,449 11,633 (100.0) 142,607,204,821 (100.0)

Sossity 2008-10-23 00:15:57 UTC #6

I have been using this to copy alot of files from my old drive to my new one, I then check both drives for matching numbers of files & folders in windows explore, if they match that seems to mean all files got copied. I notice on occasion that everything gets copied when checking in widows explore except for one file; ie a folder with 300 files & 30 folders on my old drive to new drive; 299 files, 30 folders, this has happened a couple of times & when I went to check myself file by file, folder by folder everything was there. I went to another folder where everything was copied to my new drive, checked the folder on the new drive & noticed an odd hp video cd file & a small greyed out .tif file among the folders, I deleted this & then in windows exlore, just like the 300 files 30 folders folder, this folder now showed it had everything except 1 file, the odd ones I had just deleted, because they were not on the old drive.

Is there anyway I can verify that everything is getting copied accurately? what is going on with the occasional 1 file missed? if you can follow what I just described, is tera copy leaving odd data files after it is copying folder contents?

Sossity